Reclaiming Marxism for the Working Class, Historical Materialism
IRSN Education Document I
The present state of Marxism is far from healthy and that is unfortunate. Unfortunate, because Marxism represents a major stride forward in the analysis of society and a tremendously useful tool for the working class in its struggle to secure its interests by overturning the system of capitalism. It is so valuable a tool for the working class that it is not sufficient to bemoan its present state; it is necessary to reclaim it.
As a step towards this objective, let us begin by defining what Marxism is and, by way of clarification, what it isn’t. Let’s begin with some of what it is not. Marxism is not everything Marx thought and wrote. There are books published, for example, with titles such as ‘Marxist Esthetics’, but while Karl Marx may certainly have had his views on esthetics, there is, in fact, no such thing as ‘Marxist esthetics’. Marxism as a system of thought and form of analysis limits itself to the understanding of the development of human society. It could be argued that Marxism could legitimately also be said to include an inquiry into the tactics of the working class in its struggle for its interests as a class, but it cannot be correctly said to be an system of ontological inquiry, a system for literary criticism, or a dogma. Marx and Engels were brilliant individuals and, like many such individuals, thought about many different topics. Their opinions on many of these topics may be of interest and may be insightful, but Marxism is something distinct from the collected views of Marx and Engels and its focus is far less broad. Thus, while we may be able to speak of Marx’s views on literature, we cannot speak of a Marxist critique of literature. The subject of Marxism is the development of human society; it does not attempt to embrace an understanding of the natural sciences, an appreciation of the arts, or an inquiry into the nature of the divine.
The foundation of Marxism is the system of analysis developed and used extensively by Marx and Engels, which they called ‘Historical Materialism’. Many follow Lenin in using the phrase ‘Dialectical Materialism’, but that has served to obscure that the focus of this analysis is human history, specifically, and has tended to make intimidate far too many people without cause. Dialectical analysis is not something mystical. It is not an obscure, quasi-religious mode of thinking. It is simply the most useful form of analysis to employ when trying to understand complex, dynamic systems. Instead of proceeding in a linear fashion better suited to a relatively simple unfolding of events, it approaches the subject under consideration with an understanding that each element introduced into a complex system finds itself in contradiction to other elements and it focuses on the system's tendency to seek to negate these contradictions, despite this process giving rise to new contradictions. It is true that dialectics is a more complex means of analyzing trends, but it clear that the use of a simplistic means of analysis for grappling with complex and dynamic processes is unlikely to provide much of value in the end. Thus, the choice of a dialectical form of analysis doesn’t arise out of Marx or Engels commitment to any philosophic principle, but is simply a matter of choosing the best tool for the job and nothing more.
But what is Historical Materialism and why should revolutionary socialists care about it? Put as simply as possible, it is a scientific means of analyzing the history of human society in order to find patterns that can be used to effectively anticipate future developments. The term ‘historical’ provides the subject matter; the term ‘materialism’ tells us that it relies on the actual activities of every day life, concerned with survival of human beings, to provide an understanding of historical development, rather than presuming some over-awing philosophy to have guided its path. Simpler still, it looks to the efforts of human beings, as social animals, to live through another day as the starting point for historical analysis. By taking this approach, Marx and Engels concluded that it was in the nature of humanity to develop tools in seeking to wrest subsistence from nature and to develop a social web to facilitate this process. From these two components, human tools and human society, arise what Marxism calls the ‘mode of production’ and it is the mode of production that determines how human society creates wealth and how it distributes it for consumption.
Historical Materialism proceeds from this insight to recognize that it is the development of the mode of production that gives rise to the other aspects of human society, including the system of ideas--or ideology--by which it seeks to explain its experience. Simplifying in order to identify broad patterns of development within history, Historical Materialism identified a number of forms of social organization that arise from this underlying reality, including ‘Primitive Communism’, ‘State Ownership’, Feudalism, Capitalism, and Socialism. All of these forms of social organization are identified by the mode of production underlying them and the social classes that arise from their distinct modes of production. By way of translation, so to speak, we can say that the first two forms of social organization mentioned can be thought of as early tribal society and the system of great empires of what is commonly called the ‘Classical’ period (Sumerian, Babylonian, ancient Greece, Roman, Byzantine, the Islamic Caliphate, Songhai, Mali, ancient India, ancient China, etc.).
Allow me to pause here to draw attention to a number of deviations from Marx and Engels' concepts as expressed in their analysis of history to be found in contemporary Marxist writings. First, there is a tendency--borrowed from capitalist anthropology--to reject this conception of human social development because it can be viewed as ranking the various forms of social organization as ‘primitive’ to ‘progressive’, such that one form of social organization might be viewed as ‘better’ than another. While it has been misunderstood and misused in this manner, the same can be said of Darwin’s theory of human evolution. Saying this, however, no more invalidates Historical Materialism than it does evolutionary theory. The use of the term ‘progressive’ in Historical Materialism does nothing more than identify a given mode of production relative to others historically and does not represent a value judgment beyond that. It would be foolish, for example, to believe that Marx and Engels viewed the development of feudalism, with its complete collapse of scientific learning and philosophical inquiry, as being preferable to the great accomplishments of antiquity; but the development of the latter is dependent on having passed through the former, thereby rendering it ‘progressive’ in a historical context. Historical Materialism recognizes that each of these forms of social organization are dependent on developments in the mode of production and, as such, represent ways in which human society has sought to maintain its material existence, nothing more.
Another, somewhat striking, deviation pertains to the term used to describe the social organization of the ‘Classical’ period. Reading contemporary works of Marxism, one is likely to encounter the phrase ‘slave owning society’ for what Marx and Engels called ‘State Ownership’. The cause for this is clear; contemporary Marxists have come to view state ownership of the means of production to be synonymous with socialism. The great Irish Marxist James Connolly attempted to set the record straight on this point in his writings on ‘muncipalisation’, as later socialists have done in their critiques of the Soviet Union, but we will leave this aside for right now and return to it at a more appropriate time. For the present, it is simply useful to note that one's analysis can become muddled when departing from the underlying principles of Historical Materialism. It is necessary to always look to the nature of the mode of production and the relationships of its component classes to properly understand social development.
Returning to the core of Historical Materialism, the use of this kind of analysis revealed to Marx and Engels that each mode of production gave rise to distinct social classes. Thus classes, in Marxist usage, are social groups defined by their relationship to the means of production. Because each is defined by its relationship to the means of production, each class has interests that are distinct from those of other social classes. Moreover, what Marx and Engels came to recognize is that each class's interests are in conflict with those of other classes in society, and it is the conflict of these interests, and the resulting conflict between social classes, that is the driving force that ultimately causes the change from one system of social organization to another.
It was Historical Materialist analysis that enabled Marx and Engels to discern the means by which capitalism develops and thereby to identify the internal contradictions that ultimately bring the system into crisis. Moreover, it was this form of analysis that enabled them to identify the proletariat--or working class--as posing the central challenge to the system of capitalist production. In doing so, they were able to break with the tradition of ‘Utopian Socialism’ that had previously held sway and replace it with ‘Scientific Socialism’-an approach to the struggle for socialism that is rooted, not in the creative thinking of a handful of well-meaning individuals, but instead rooted in the consciousness of that class within capitalism whose interests pose an irreconcilable contradiction for the system as a whole.
A crucial concept in Marxism, and one that has been largely lost in contemporary writings, is that socialism, as was stated quite plainly by Marx and Engels, is synonymous with the consciousness of the proletariat. ‘Consciousness’, as used within Marxism, is a distinct, technical term. It should not be confused with how the term is used in a broader sense, as reflected in the phrases ‘altered consciousness’ or ‘higher consciousness’. In Marxist usage, consciousness is a worldview that arises from the experience of a given class, as a result of that class's relationship to the means of production. Thus, when Lenin says that the working class can never achieve more than ‘trade union consciousness’, he is saying something nonsensical in a Marxist context, as well as something that directly contradicts Marx and Engels own statements and the very basis of Scientific Socialism. A trade union is not a class and therefore cannot be said, in a Marxist sense, to have a consciousness associated with it. When a working person develops class-consciousness, she or he develops a consciousness of the need for a socialist reorganization of society. From this understanding it naturally follows that it is central to the success of any socialist movement that it do everything in its power to raise the level of class-consciousness among working people.
Let us pause to consider another often poorly understood/used technical term of Marxism: ‘ideology’. Marx defines ‘ideology’ as ‘false consciousness’. What is meant by this can be simply stated as a worldview that is other than that which would naturally arise from one’s membership in a specific class and derived from that class’s relationship to the means of production. Thus, for working people, socialism is not an ideology, it is their own class-consciousness; however, when they adopt a worldview of the capitalist class, they are being driven by ideology. As unnatural as this may appear, it is, in fact, the normal state of affairs that most working class people do view the world through the prism of capitalist ideology. The ruling class seeks to impose its worldview on all of the classes within society and, in that it controls the means by which all members of society derive their ability to survive, it is very adept at accomplishing this. Until they become class conscious, working people will tend to adopt the views of other classes with capitalism, especially the capitalist class itself, and act in accordance with these ideologies. For Marxists it is essential to strive to free working people from being under the sway of such ideologies, be they racism, sexism, fascism, or liberalism.
At times, the immediate interests of several social classes may come into alignment. Against the system of feudalism, both the working class and the capitalist class found enough commonalities to forge an alliance though, after feudalism's fall, the interest of the latter led to the oppression of the former. Likewise, in societies confronting the disorientation wrought from accelerated development brought on by imperialist penetration, the immediate interests of the peasant class and the proletariat may provide sufficient cause for them to ally, as that of the proletariat and the petty bourgeois may in other such circumstances. In such situations, when the working class is relatively weak and makes up a relatively small sector of the populace, there may be little of its own interests that it can achieve beyond the few things it shares momentarily with another class; but this should not be mistakenly seen as the working class acting in its own interests. The interests of the working class, as such, are specific and unique to it and any change of the social order that does not bring the working class to power on its own, is one that will ultimately oppress the working class. The ideologies of liberalism and fascism can, in some circumstances, appear attractive to working people, but neither reflects their class-consciousness as workers. Both ultimately represent the interests of their oppressor. It is, therefore, imperative that revolutionary socialists combat the influence of racist, sexist, and fascist thinking on their fellow workers; but they must be equally diligent in combating the pernicious influence of liberalism within the working class. Only workers' own class-consciousness, that is socialism, offers a way forward for the working class.
Revolution, as used within the context of Marxism, means the over-turning of one mode of production and its replacement by another--one which arises from the consciousness of the class whose interests are most antagonistic to the existing mode of production's ruling class. Again, 'revolution' can be said to be a technical term within Marxism. In general parlance, it is possible to speak of a political revolution, whereby one section of the ruling elite replaces another; but within the context of Marxism we can only speak of a social revolution, whereby one social class replaces another as the ruling class and, in doing so, sets about to restructure the mode of production to reflect its own interests. Because 'revolution' is used in this sense within Marxism, it can be seen why Marx and Engels made plain their view that a revolution can only be made by a class, rather than by a political party. This Marxist perspective on the nature of revolution has also been reflected in the writings of James Connolly, the traditional programme of republican socialism, and in the writings of many other revolutionary Marxists.
What arises from this understanding is the recognition that it is not sufficient for a given party to seize the reigns of political power within a nation for us, as Marxists, to say that a revolution has succeeded. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating and the proof of revolutionary change is to be found in the displacement of the capitalist ruling class by the rule of the working class; but more importantly, in a fundamental transformation of the mode of production. If the working class continues to function as wage laborers and the surplus value of their labor continues to be extracted as profit, we cannot speak of a socialist revolution having taken place. This is the lesson imparted to the revolutionary movement of the working class by Historical Materialism and it is one we dare not fail to learn.
Peter Urban
The present state of Marxism is far from healthy and that is unfortunate. Unfortunate, because Marxism represents a major stride forward in the analysis of society and a tremendously useful tool for the working class in its struggle to secure its interests by overturning the system of capitalism. It is so valuable a tool for the working class that it is not sufficient to bemoan its present state; it is necessary to reclaim it.
As a step towards this objective, let us begin by defining what Marxism is and, by way of clarification, what it isn’t. Let’s begin with some of what it is not. Marxism is not everything Marx thought and wrote. There are books published, for example, with titles such as ‘Marxist Esthetics’, but while Karl Marx may certainly have had his views on esthetics, there is, in fact, no such thing as ‘Marxist esthetics’. Marxism as a system of thought and form of analysis limits itself to the understanding of the development of human society. It could be argued that Marxism could legitimately also be said to include an inquiry into the tactics of the working class in its struggle for its interests as a class, but it cannot be correctly said to be an system of ontological inquiry, a system for literary criticism, or a dogma. Marx and Engels were brilliant individuals and, like many such individuals, thought about many different topics. Their opinions on many of these topics may be of interest and may be insightful, but Marxism is something distinct from the collected views of Marx and Engels and its focus is far less broad. Thus, while we may be able to speak of Marx’s views on literature, we cannot speak of a Marxist critique of literature. The subject of Marxism is the development of human society; it does not attempt to embrace an understanding of the natural sciences, an appreciation of the arts, or an inquiry into the nature of the divine.
The foundation of Marxism is the system of analysis developed and used extensively by Marx and Engels, which they called ‘Historical Materialism’. Many follow Lenin in using the phrase ‘Dialectical Materialism’, but that has served to obscure that the focus of this analysis is human history, specifically, and has tended to make intimidate far too many people without cause. Dialectical analysis is not something mystical. It is not an obscure, quasi-religious mode of thinking. It is simply the most useful form of analysis to employ when trying to understand complex, dynamic systems. Instead of proceeding in a linear fashion better suited to a relatively simple unfolding of events, it approaches the subject under consideration with an understanding that each element introduced into a complex system finds itself in contradiction to other elements and it focuses on the system's tendency to seek to negate these contradictions, despite this process giving rise to new contradictions. It is true that dialectics is a more complex means of analyzing trends, but it clear that the use of a simplistic means of analysis for grappling with complex and dynamic processes is unlikely to provide much of value in the end. Thus, the choice of a dialectical form of analysis doesn’t arise out of Marx or Engels commitment to any philosophic principle, but is simply a matter of choosing the best tool for the job and nothing more.
But what is Historical Materialism and why should revolutionary socialists care about it? Put as simply as possible, it is a scientific means of analyzing the history of human society in order to find patterns that can be used to effectively anticipate future developments. The term ‘historical’ provides the subject matter; the term ‘materialism’ tells us that it relies on the actual activities of every day life, concerned with survival of human beings, to provide an understanding of historical development, rather than presuming some over-awing philosophy to have guided its path. Simpler still, it looks to the efforts of human beings, as social animals, to live through another day as the starting point for historical analysis. By taking this approach, Marx and Engels concluded that it was in the nature of humanity to develop tools in seeking to wrest subsistence from nature and to develop a social web to facilitate this process. From these two components, human tools and human society, arise what Marxism calls the ‘mode of production’ and it is the mode of production that determines how human society creates wealth and how it distributes it for consumption.
Historical Materialism proceeds from this insight to recognize that it is the development of the mode of production that gives rise to the other aspects of human society, including the system of ideas--or ideology--by which it seeks to explain its experience. Simplifying in order to identify broad patterns of development within history, Historical Materialism identified a number of forms of social organization that arise from this underlying reality, including ‘Primitive Communism’, ‘State Ownership’, Feudalism, Capitalism, and Socialism. All of these forms of social organization are identified by the mode of production underlying them and the social classes that arise from their distinct modes of production. By way of translation, so to speak, we can say that the first two forms of social organization mentioned can be thought of as early tribal society and the system of great empires of what is commonly called the ‘Classical’ period (Sumerian, Babylonian, ancient Greece, Roman, Byzantine, the Islamic Caliphate, Songhai, Mali, ancient India, ancient China, etc.).
Allow me to pause here to draw attention to a number of deviations from Marx and Engels' concepts as expressed in their analysis of history to be found in contemporary Marxist writings. First, there is a tendency--borrowed from capitalist anthropology--to reject this conception of human social development because it can be viewed as ranking the various forms of social organization as ‘primitive’ to ‘progressive’, such that one form of social organization might be viewed as ‘better’ than another. While it has been misunderstood and misused in this manner, the same can be said of Darwin’s theory of human evolution. Saying this, however, no more invalidates Historical Materialism than it does evolutionary theory. The use of the term ‘progressive’ in Historical Materialism does nothing more than identify a given mode of production relative to others historically and does not represent a value judgment beyond that. It would be foolish, for example, to believe that Marx and Engels viewed the development of feudalism, with its complete collapse of scientific learning and philosophical inquiry, as being preferable to the great accomplishments of antiquity; but the development of the latter is dependent on having passed through the former, thereby rendering it ‘progressive’ in a historical context. Historical Materialism recognizes that each of these forms of social organization are dependent on developments in the mode of production and, as such, represent ways in which human society has sought to maintain its material existence, nothing more.
Another, somewhat striking, deviation pertains to the term used to describe the social organization of the ‘Classical’ period. Reading contemporary works of Marxism, one is likely to encounter the phrase ‘slave owning society’ for what Marx and Engels called ‘State Ownership’. The cause for this is clear; contemporary Marxists have come to view state ownership of the means of production to be synonymous with socialism. The great Irish Marxist James Connolly attempted to set the record straight on this point in his writings on ‘muncipalisation’, as later socialists have done in their critiques of the Soviet Union, but we will leave this aside for right now and return to it at a more appropriate time. For the present, it is simply useful to note that one's analysis can become muddled when departing from the underlying principles of Historical Materialism. It is necessary to always look to the nature of the mode of production and the relationships of its component classes to properly understand social development.
Returning to the core of Historical Materialism, the use of this kind of analysis revealed to Marx and Engels that each mode of production gave rise to distinct social classes. Thus classes, in Marxist usage, are social groups defined by their relationship to the means of production. Because each is defined by its relationship to the means of production, each class has interests that are distinct from those of other social classes. Moreover, what Marx and Engels came to recognize is that each class's interests are in conflict with those of other classes in society, and it is the conflict of these interests, and the resulting conflict between social classes, that is the driving force that ultimately causes the change from one system of social organization to another.
It was Historical Materialist analysis that enabled Marx and Engels to discern the means by which capitalism develops and thereby to identify the internal contradictions that ultimately bring the system into crisis. Moreover, it was this form of analysis that enabled them to identify the proletariat--or working class--as posing the central challenge to the system of capitalist production. In doing so, they were able to break with the tradition of ‘Utopian Socialism’ that had previously held sway and replace it with ‘Scientific Socialism’-an approach to the struggle for socialism that is rooted, not in the creative thinking of a handful of well-meaning individuals, but instead rooted in the consciousness of that class within capitalism whose interests pose an irreconcilable contradiction for the system as a whole.
A crucial concept in Marxism, and one that has been largely lost in contemporary writings, is that socialism, as was stated quite plainly by Marx and Engels, is synonymous with the consciousness of the proletariat. ‘Consciousness’, as used within Marxism, is a distinct, technical term. It should not be confused with how the term is used in a broader sense, as reflected in the phrases ‘altered consciousness’ or ‘higher consciousness’. In Marxist usage, consciousness is a worldview that arises from the experience of a given class, as a result of that class's relationship to the means of production. Thus, when Lenin says that the working class can never achieve more than ‘trade union consciousness’, he is saying something nonsensical in a Marxist context, as well as something that directly contradicts Marx and Engels own statements and the very basis of Scientific Socialism. A trade union is not a class and therefore cannot be said, in a Marxist sense, to have a consciousness associated with it. When a working person develops class-consciousness, she or he develops a consciousness of the need for a socialist reorganization of society. From this understanding it naturally follows that it is central to the success of any socialist movement that it do everything in its power to raise the level of class-consciousness among working people.
Let us pause to consider another often poorly understood/used technical term of Marxism: ‘ideology’. Marx defines ‘ideology’ as ‘false consciousness’. What is meant by this can be simply stated as a worldview that is other than that which would naturally arise from one’s membership in a specific class and derived from that class’s relationship to the means of production. Thus, for working people, socialism is not an ideology, it is their own class-consciousness; however, when they adopt a worldview of the capitalist class, they are being driven by ideology. As unnatural as this may appear, it is, in fact, the normal state of affairs that most working class people do view the world through the prism of capitalist ideology. The ruling class seeks to impose its worldview on all of the classes within society and, in that it controls the means by which all members of society derive their ability to survive, it is very adept at accomplishing this. Until they become class conscious, working people will tend to adopt the views of other classes with capitalism, especially the capitalist class itself, and act in accordance with these ideologies. For Marxists it is essential to strive to free working people from being under the sway of such ideologies, be they racism, sexism, fascism, or liberalism.
At times, the immediate interests of several social classes may come into alignment. Against the system of feudalism, both the working class and the capitalist class found enough commonalities to forge an alliance though, after feudalism's fall, the interest of the latter led to the oppression of the former. Likewise, in societies confronting the disorientation wrought from accelerated development brought on by imperialist penetration, the immediate interests of the peasant class and the proletariat may provide sufficient cause for them to ally, as that of the proletariat and the petty bourgeois may in other such circumstances. In such situations, when the working class is relatively weak and makes up a relatively small sector of the populace, there may be little of its own interests that it can achieve beyond the few things it shares momentarily with another class; but this should not be mistakenly seen as the working class acting in its own interests. The interests of the working class, as such, are specific and unique to it and any change of the social order that does not bring the working class to power on its own, is one that will ultimately oppress the working class. The ideologies of liberalism and fascism can, in some circumstances, appear attractive to working people, but neither reflects their class-consciousness as workers. Both ultimately represent the interests of their oppressor. It is, therefore, imperative that revolutionary socialists combat the influence of racist, sexist, and fascist thinking on their fellow workers; but they must be equally diligent in combating the pernicious influence of liberalism within the working class. Only workers' own class-consciousness, that is socialism, offers a way forward for the working class.
Revolution, as used within the context of Marxism, means the over-turning of one mode of production and its replacement by another--one which arises from the consciousness of the class whose interests are most antagonistic to the existing mode of production's ruling class. Again, 'revolution' can be said to be a technical term within Marxism. In general parlance, it is possible to speak of a political revolution, whereby one section of the ruling elite replaces another; but within the context of Marxism we can only speak of a social revolution, whereby one social class replaces another as the ruling class and, in doing so, sets about to restructure the mode of production to reflect its own interests. Because 'revolution' is used in this sense within Marxism, it can be seen why Marx and Engels made plain their view that a revolution can only be made by a class, rather than by a political party. This Marxist perspective on the nature of revolution has also been reflected in the writings of James Connolly, the traditional programme of republican socialism, and in the writings of many other revolutionary Marxists.
What arises from this understanding is the recognition that it is not sufficient for a given party to seize the reigns of political power within a nation for us, as Marxists, to say that a revolution has succeeded. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating and the proof of revolutionary change is to be found in the displacement of the capitalist ruling class by the rule of the working class; but more importantly, in a fundamental transformation of the mode of production. If the working class continues to function as wage laborers and the surplus value of their labor continues to be extracted as profit, we cannot speak of a socialist revolution having taken place. This is the lesson imparted to the revolutionary movement of the working class by Historical Materialism and it is one we dare not fail to learn.
Peter Urban